


That Sudden Stillness

by anonforlackofabettername



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Anxiety, College, Depression, Gen, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Superpowers, kind of stream-of-conciousness, still I'd rather not trigger anyone accidentally, though its as non-explicit as I could make it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 03:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonforlackofabettername/pseuds/anonforlackofabettername
Summary: You wake up one day with the ability to freeze time at will for as long as you want with no repercussions. What’s the first thing you do with your newfound powers?Take a nap.





	That Sudden Stillness

**Author's Note:**

> I got inspired by a tumblr post which I quoted for the summary cause I'm unoriginal. And then this kind of just flowed out of me stream-of-consciousness style. Cross posted from my tumblr. I hope you like it. Sorry about my grammar and habit for run-on sentences.

It’s the middle of the day the first time you notice it happening. That isn’t to say that it’s the first time it happened, looking back, just the first time you noticed it. The first time was probably that time you collapsed on your bed for a twenty minute nap and woke up five minutes later feeling totally rested as if you’d slept eight hours. No the first time you notice it it’s been a long morning and you’ve got class in an hour, a tutoring session after that, plans with your friends for dinner, a project due the next day at midnight that you still need to put five or six hours and several thousand words into, and to top it all off, despite being on medication you’re in the middle of a major episode and it took all your energy just to get out of bed that morning. You've managed to make it back to your room to eat something and grab your books for your next class but instead of doing any of that you collapsed face first on your bed because really just because you should be doing it doesn’t mean you have the energy to do it and mustering the effort is hard.

After five minutes of lying face down in bed, hating the world, and trying to convince yourself to stop being a piece of shit and get out of bed, you manage to at least roll over so you can stare at your alarm clock because if you can’t convince yourself to get out of bed then maybe the time and your guilt-complex about missing class will be enough to get you moving. Except it doesn’t work. Instead you just end up staring blankly at the clock until your eyes go blurry from staring at the same thing for way to long. It can’t have been too long though because when you blink your eyes, the time hasn’t changed. Eventually your eyes slip shut and you relax even more into the bed. You think that you should probably set an alarm if you’re going to sleep but that requires brain power and effort and you used most of your spoons in class that morning. You’ve got a spoon left but you have no idea how it’s going last you through dinner and working on your project. Maybe you can cancel dinner? That would suck because you’d been planning this with your friends for weeks but you don’t think you can do it and honestly if they don’t understand then you should probably get new friends. You don’t want to bail on them though. You hate having to cancel plans because of your mental illness but you don’t know what to do with yourself to make it better in the middle of an episode like this. You wish you could just sleep for a week and not miss anything. This is the last thought to go through your mind before you drift off to sleep.

Your sleep is peaceful and dreamless and you feel like you’re surrounded by cotton as you float back to consciousness. That is until a random thought about classes floats through your head and you bolt awake as adrenaline surges through you and you realize _holy shit you probably missed your class_. Except when you look at you clock it looks like no times passed. And you don’t mean you fell asleep for five minutes and it felt like thirty. You mean that literally no time has passed. You know exactly what time it was when you fell asleep because you were staring at the clock when you did and your alarm clock has the same time.

You throw yourself out of bed swearing because not only are you late for class but your alarm clock is broken too and you do not have the time or energy to fix it. You frantically fish around in your bed for your iPhone so you can check what time it is and see if there’s still a point to trying to make it to class. Except your phone has the exact same time too. You hold your breath and count for a minute but nothing happens. You know it’s been at least ninety seconds but the one on your digital clock stubbornly refuses to change to a two.

It’s while you’re counting in your head again and starting to panic that you notice how silent it is. Campus isn’t always that loud in the middle of the day but you should be able to at least hear your roommates or the people moving around next door not to mention the traffic from the road behind your building, but there’s nothing. You go to your window and look out and there’s several students walking to class but frozen mid step like some sort of elaborate manikin challenge. This causes you to freak out even more. Eventually you sit down as you try and get your breathing and heart rate under control because the last thing you need right now is a panic attack. It’s after you feel a little calmer that you sit up and notice that time still hasn’t moved. You go grab yourself the snack you were going eat when you first got back to your room and take stock of yourself. You should feel exhausted from the near panic attack but the nap, however long it was, combined with the food in your hand has done a remarkable job of restoring your spoons and the jolt of adrenaline has actually got you ready to go.

It’s as you’re deciding that yes you do feel up to facing the rest of the day that you notice the numbers on your alarm clock start moving again and the blare of a car horn breaks the quiet of your room. You rush to the window for the second time in what feels like less than five minutes and notice that the people who had been still are walking and talking like normal. You grab your bag, shove your books into it and head off to your class. Who knows what will happen if you stay in your room and with your energy back you feel like you’re actually up for everything you have planned. Whatever happened you’re thankful for that at least.

The next time you notice it happening, again it may not have been the next time it happened, simply the next time you noticed it. It’s a couple weeks later and you’ve got a project due at midnight that’s been killing you for weeks and you’re so close to having it done, but this last paragraph is killing you and it’s already 11:40. Just a few more sentences and you can speed through the conclusion. There’s no time to proof-read it at this point, but getting it in on time beats making sure it’s perfect. As you type, you keep glancing at the clock nervously even though it’s making you anxious and breaking your flow. After five minutes of this you force yourself to look away and focus on finishing the paper.

It’s as you’re typing the final words in your conclusion that you glance at the time again and notice it still reads 11:46. After last time you’d thought you’d imagined it but it looks like you didn’t. You take a deep breathe in and out to ward off any panic and then scroll to the top of your paper. You’re not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth and if whatever this is is going to give you the time to finish, you’re going to take the opportunity to do a quick edit before you turn the paper in. It’s a good thing you did since you missed a pretty glaring citation error in the second body paragraph and if you had turned it in like that the teacher could have called you out for plagiarism. Its right as you’re hitting the submit button, sending off the final draft that the clock ticks forward to 11:47. You close your computer, push back your chair, and stand up and stretch out the tension in your shoulders that’s accumulated from sitting hunched over your computer and stressing about the essay. Then with a final roll of your shoulders, you change into pajamas, turn out your desk lamp, and climb into bed.

After that you start to notice it every now and again in moments of high stress or when you just can’t do it and you need a moment. Never where people can see but you’ll take a five minute breather or an hours nap and only be gone for a minute. You find you’re sleeping much better and you’ve never functioned so well during midterms before in your life. It’s during a bad day when you do it on purpose the first time. You’ve been worried for a week about this event, getting yourself worked up every time you think about it, or try and plan what you might say and what questions you might be asked, and you just can’t do it. _You can’t you can’t you can’t!_ It’s like a litany running through your head blocking out every other thought you might have.

You manage to get yourself to a corner away from everyone else and you sink down hoping that will block out the nasty thoughts in your head and calm the galloping of your heart but you can feel how unsuccessful you are. The worst is you can feel tears pricking at the corner of your eyelids and that’s the last thing you want, crying in public. Your friend has been sending you worried looks and you wish you could reassure them but you can’t. You can barely hold yourself together and you just wish everything would **_STOP!_**

And just like that it does. You don’t notice it at first over the loudness of your thoughts but the room is eerily silent. It takes you some time but you manage to uncurl yourself just enough that you can peer out of your corner and take stock of the room. Time has stopped. You curl back up. Now that the sound is gone and no one is trying to speak to you, you feel so much less overwhelmed but you’re still not ready to face the world.

You have no idea how long you sit there curled up and trying to get yourself under control, but eventually your head no longer hurts and your heartbeat slows to the point where you’d barely notice it if you weren’t hyper aware of everything that your body is doing at that moment. When you finally manage to uncurl and stand up, you immediately dart out of the room full of what could pass as manikins and head to the bathroom. There you splash water on your face and take a look in the mirror. You don’t look like as much of a mess as you thought you would. There’s a little bit of red around your eyes but no one’s going to notice that and really, you look less frazzled than you feel. Honestly you look put together and as you stare yourself in the eye you tell yourself,

“You can do this. You got this,” and for once you don’t feel like you’re lying to yourself. The worst has already happened, you had a breakdown and you survived it. Everything after this shouldn’t be too bad. As you turn to open the door you hear the toilet flush behind you. Time has started again, and you can do it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I'm on tumblr at anonforlackofabettername.tumblr.com if you wanna come talk to me. I promise I'm nice.


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